Dan Hardy has suffered many personal injuries in his career, but none so severe as the revelation that he has a congenital heart condition known as Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome.
The condition he’s named as his “Wolf heart” means that several commissions in the US would not license him to fight, leaving a question mark over his UFC career.
According to a recent interview he did with Bloody Elbow, Hardy is still considering whether he should undertake surgery to deal with the problem or get a second opinion.
“I haven’t spoken to Dana (White) since he was encouraging me to go out and get the second opinion,” he said. “I was supposed to see Lorenzo (Fertitta) this week sometime, but we have just not managed to connect. I’m still kind of in limbo. I’m training, and I’ll be in California next week to help Mac Danzig out. After that, I’ll be driving along the west coast, and I’ll be stopping in and training at various gyms. I have stuff to do, but other than my sponsors, I don’t really have a job.”
Hardy says he’ll only have the career-saving surgery if it’s absolutely necessary, which is a tragic situation for the man who had just begun turning around his career after a crushing series of four losses.
But a victory over Duane Ludwig at UFC 146 and Amir Sadollah four months later had him being discussed as a revived welterweight who’d rarely had to be side-lined due to injury. However, it’s been almost a year since he last stepped into the Octagon and now he’s having to deal with a different kind of personal injury.
Of course, he’s faced adversity before—the fighter who once fought Georges St. Pierre for the title in 2010 was close to being cut only a year later. That left as a fighter struggling to keep sponsors.
“I went from one fight, where I sold the space on the front of my shorts for $5,000, to six months later, going back to the same company, and only getting an offer of $1500 because of the sponsor fee. I refused it, because someone has got to set a standard. The problem is, when I turn it down, there’s another 10 fighters on the undercard that will take that offer, because there’s nobody else paying.”
If he had been injured in the Octagon, he could perhaps go to a personal injury attorney to claim some sort of compensation, but right now the fighter says he’s in limbo.
He added that if he can’t fight for the UFC anymore, this will be the end of him as a professional fighter.
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